Christian Schönauer

Chronic pain rehabilitation with a serious game using multimodal input

Rehabilitation for chronic pain follows a multidisciplinary approach, which despite the effort, often lacks the long term success and patients often fail to translate the skills learned in therapy to every day life. Serious games are hypothesized to support patients to self manage their complaints and keep training their physical functions by themselves, especially, when the game is controlled by the patients own body performance. In this paper we present the implementation of a system providing multimodal input, including our own full body motion capture system, a low cost motion capture system (Microsoft Kinect) and biosignal acquisition devices to a game engine. In addition, a workflow has been established, that enables the use of the acquired multimodal data for serious games in a medical environment. Finally, a serious game has been implemented, targeting rehabilitation of patients with chronic pain of the lower back and neck. The focus of this work is on the multimodal input and how it is used in a game to support rehabilitation of chronic pain patients. A brief comparison of a marker-based full body MoCap system and Microsofts Kinect is included. Preliminary results of tests currently underway are provided.

Full body interaction for serious games in motor rehabilitation

Serious games and especially their use in healthcare applications are an active and rapidly growing area of research. A key aspect of games in rehabilitation is 3D input. In this paper we present our implementation of a full body motion capture (MoCap) system, which, together with a biosignal acquisition device, has been integrated in a game engine. Furthermore, a workflow has been established that enables the use of acquired skeletal data for serious games in a medical environment. Finally, a serious game has been implemented, targeting rehabilitation of patients with chronic pain of the lower back and neck, a group that has previously been neglected by serious games. The focus of this work is on the full body MoCap system and its integration with biosignal devices and the game engine. A short overview of the application and prelimiary results are provided.

Multimodal motion guidance: techniques for adaptive and dynamic feedback

The ability to guide human motion through automatically generated feedback has significant potential for applications in areas, such as motor learning, human-computer interaction, telepresence, and augmented reality. This paper focuses on the design and development of such systems from a human cognition and perception perspective. We analyze the dimensions of the design space for motion guidance systems, spanned by technologies and human information processing, and identify opportunities for new feedback techniques. We present a novel motion guidance system, that was implemented based on these insights to enable feedback for position, direction and continuous velocities. It uses motion capture to track a user in space and guides using visual, vibrotactile and pneumatic actuation. Our system also introduces motion retargeting through time warping, motion dynamics and prediction, to allow more flexibility and adaptability to user performance.

3D building reconstruction and thermal mapping in fire brigade operations

Fire fighting remains a dangerous profession despite many recent technological and organizational measures. Sensors and technical systems can augment the performance of fire fighters and increase safety and efficiency during operation. An important aspect in that context is the awareness of location, structure and thermal properties of the environment. This work focuses on the design and development of a mobile system, which can reconstruct a 3d model of a buildings interior structure in real-time and fuses the visualization with the image of a thermal camera. In addition, the position and viewing direction of the fire fighter within the model is determined and a thermal map can be generated from the gathered data. This helps an operational commander to provide accurate instructions to his men during a mission. First tests with our system in different situations showed good results, being able to reconstruct different larger scenes and create thermal maps thereof.

Touch, Movement and Vibration: User Perception of Vibrotactile Feedback for Touch and Mid-Air Gestures

Designing appropriate feedback for gesture interfaces is an important aspect of user experience and performance. We conduct the first investigation of users’ perceptions of vibrotactile stimuli during touch and mid-air gesture input for smart devices. Furthermore, we explore perception of feedback that is decoupled from the smart device and delivered outside its operating range by an accessory wearable, i.e., feedback delivered at arm-level. Results show user perception of vibrotactile stimuli up to 80 % accurate, which we use to recommend guidelines for practitioners to design new vibrotactile feedback techniques for smart devices.

Development of Tests to Evaluate the Sensory Abilities of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

An emerging line of research attempts to reveal underlying mechanisms of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by studying differences in sensory processing in individuals with ASD. One sense that has not been studied well yet in this context is proprioception, a sensory system that processes information from muscles and joints about body position and force, and is hypothesized to feed into a body schema that is the foundation for motor planning and purposeful action (praxis). In this paper, we introduce new methods to measure proprioceptive functions of children with ASD. The instruments use force, touch and RGB-D sensors to retrieve data in different test scenarios. Data are transferred to a mobile device or PC and analyzed close to real-time with specifically developed software tools. The instruments were pilot tested with typically developing children to test for functionality and usability of the instruments. They will be used in a larger study with children with ASD.

Parallel tracking and mapping in Hofburg Festsaal

Precise localization for mobile Augmented Reality in large indoor environments without specific tracking infrastructure is challenging. This is especially true for rooms with changing properties, like lighting, seating and carpeting. With these constraints a map for a vision based tracking approach has to be continuously updated. The Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) algorithm is capable of generating and extending a map while tracking the camera pose in an unknown environment. However, it has originally been designed for small workspace environments and has therefore certain limitations. We have extended and modified the original implementation in order to ensure efficient and robust map generation and tracking in large rooms. Furthermore, we have tested a mobile setup with the system in Festsaal in Viennas Hofburg, which is close to thousand square meters in size. The users position and path was tracked while the environment was augmented with virtual objects and the system was successfully tested for robustness and occlusions.